Six phases. Two tracks — fast and complex. SIPOC for each phase and every major activity. Click any phase to expand the full detail.
Focused interviews, corridor mapping, burning platform test. Typically 8–15 stakeholders.
Full diagnostic across all levels. Informal network mapping. 20–50+ stakeholders. Multiple sites.
Discovery is the most frequently shortened phase and the most important. CN starts with the sceptics, not the sponsors. The corridor map — who actually influences what — is built here and cannot be reconstructed later. The readout must contain at least one finding that challenges the programme brief.
Interview the people who think this is a bad idea before the people who commissioned it. Their objections are the diagnostic. Always ask: "what would have to be true for this to fail?"
The corridor map is CN's most important diagnostic tool. It is never shown in full to the client — it is used to design the engagement programme. The informal leader whose endorsement brings twenty people is more valuable than twenty individual conversations.
"We know our people and they like us" is heard here. CN's job is to show — with specific evidence from specific conversations — the gap between the leadership narrative and what the front line actually believes. This is the most politically difficult part of discovery.
The gap between the documented process and the actual process is always larger than the client expects. The workarounds are not a problem — they are information about what the current design cannot do. They must be designed for, not designed out.
Focused redesign of priority layers. Target OM documented and signed off.
Full six-layer redesign. Multiple design iterations. Technology selection input. Transition planning.
The operating model must come before the technology — always. Process is designed before system configuration begins. Structure follows the operating model, not existing power dynamics. The transition plan is designed before the restructure is announced. If any of these sequences are reversed, CN flags it as a programme risk.
CN does not start OM design until the strategy is confirmed. Design principles that flow from a strategy the leadership does not actually share produce a TOM nobody follows.
Process design must precede technology configuration. CN will not sign off on system configuration until the process it will support is designed and owned. This sequence is non-negotiable.
Structure follows the OM — not the other way around. The transition is designed before announcement. CN does not recommend announcing a restructure until the selection process is defined and the support for affected people is in place.
Every benefit must be connected to a specific OM change with a credible mechanism. A benefit that cannot be connected to a specific change is an aspiration. CN challenges every vague benefit statement before design is signed off.
Corridor map activation, manager enablement, comms, readiness assessment. Typically 1–2 CN practitioners.
Full change programme. Manager enablement programme, informal leader engagement, corridor strategy, multiple CN change practitioners.
Change management is always the first budget cut. CN embeds change practitioners in the design team from day one — not as a parallel workstream but as a design input. The corridor map built in discovery is the foundation of the entire change programme. Train the trainer is not an embedding strategy — it is an exit strategy for the prime contractor.
A manager briefing tells people what is changing. A manager enablement programme equips them to handle the specific conversation their direct report will have at 4pm on a Thursday. CN designs the latter. The specific questions — "is my job changing?", "will I still have a role?" — are scripted and practised before they happen in the corridor.
The uncertain majority will follow whoever wins the corridor. CN identifies the person they will follow and engages them specifically — individually, not through communications. A converted sceptic brings their followers. A managed sceptic creates an underground resistance.
Go-live should be earned, not assumed. CN has authority — written into the SoW — to recommend delay if readiness criteria are not met. A programme that goes live before it is ready will revert. The cost of a two-week delay is a fraction of the cost of re-running the change programme in year two.
Single workstream delivery. Weekly RAID. Fortnightly steering. Benefits tracked monthly.
Multiple parallel workstreams. Full programme governance. Dedicated PMO. Workstream leads per OM layer.
Programme management is not administration. Every governance mechanism must exist to enable a decision or surface a risk. CN's RAID practice has one test: is there a named owner, a specific action and a review date for every item? If not, it is not managed. A programme that never reports red is a programme whose reporting cannot be trusted.
CN workstream leads are senior practitioners — not coordinators. They have the authority and the experience to make delivery decisions without escalating everything upward. Speed of decision is a programme asset.
A RAID log that grows every week and never shrinks is not being managed — it is being maintained for compliance. CN closes items. When an item cannot be resolved at programme level, it is escalated to governance with a specific decision required — not for noting.
Benefits tracking that only contains good news cannot be trusted. CN's monthly report shows actual vs baseline, projected vs target, variance and — critically — the named owner of the response to every variance. Red benefits have owners and actions, not explanations.
Hypercare resource in place. Adoption monitored weekly. Reversion addressed immediately.
Full embedding programme. Hypercare by workstream. Manager coaching continuing. Adoption by team tracked weekly.
Train the trainer fails here more visibly than anywhere else. The trainers are gone. The materials are on SharePoint. The organisation has been told the change is delivered. CN stays through the embedding period because this is when reversion happens — quietly, for entirely understandable reasons — and because catching it in week three is far cheaper than re-running the change programme in year two.
The reversion risk is highest in weeks two to six post go-live. The organisation has been told it is done. The programme has stood down. CN has not. Hypercare resource is not a helpdesk — it is active intervention in the teams where adoption is below threshold.
The average adoption rate hides the teams that are failing. CN measures by team and diagnoses the cause. A team that is below threshold because of a technical issue needs a different response than a team that is below threshold because their manager is not using the new process. Both need a response this week, not next month.
Benefits review. Adoption assessment. One-page close-out report.
Full benefits verification. Adoption deep-dive by workstream. Lessons report. Recommendations for year two.
The month 12 review is written into the SoW before the programme starts. CN returns — the same practitioners who did the work — and verifies against the baseline they established in week one. The report is honest: what was delivered, what was not, and why. This is the accountability that CN builds into every engagement from the start — regardless of who else is on the programme.
If the baseline was not established in week one, this verification is impossible. That is why CN will not start a programme without establishing the baseline first — regardless of client pressure to begin the change work immediately.
Month 12 adoption is the metric that matters — not go-live adoption. A programme that achieved 80% at go-live and 40% at month 12 has not delivered. CN's assessment is honest about the difference and specific about why.
45 minutes. No pitch deck. We listen first.